


Good Vibrations

by plantmamaz



Category: Blur (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Breif Mentions of Sexual Activities (Not Explicit), M/M, Mentions of Drug and Alcohol Usage, graham being anxious
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:34:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29413482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plantmamaz/pseuds/plantmamaz
Summary: Graham suffers from constant migraines, Damon's a closeted pianist, and the music department is the only place they can both find solidarity.
Relationships: Damon Albarn/Graham Coxon
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	1. Lemon Scones and Mozart

**Author's Note:**

> I listened to an unhealthy amount of Beach Boys whilst having a migraine and decided to go against what every doctor says and write an entire fic on my eye-overstimulating laptop...enjoy

Graham’s head is pounding. No, knocking. Yes, Graham’s head is knocking around in his skull like an unwanted solicitor trying to sell your door-to-door services.

So naturally, he tries to ignore it. Like how when you really have to go to the bathroom and they always say don’t think about it! and suddenly the urge is gone. But subsequently, this never works, and at the end of the day, Graham has gone through the motion of six hours of uni lecture with a beating migraine and a bad attitude. 

He doesn’t talk, nor tries to even open his eyes all the way, and looks down at his gofer-bitten nails instead of the bright fluorescent lighting. The points that leave his professors’ mouths (that are definitely crucial to his final in a few months and should definitely be written down) fly past his ears almost entirely, and instead, all he can hear is the lousy beat of his head throbbing. He knuckles at his temples viciously, rubs the space between his brows, flattens his palm and uses the heel of it to smooth out the plane of his forehead, but the palpitating ache stays like bad company who can’t tell when they’ve overstayed and leave trash all over your coffee table as if they own the damn place.

He’d get the notes from a buddy later.

The backpack he lugs around feels even heavier and, although the weather is cold enough for a light jacket, a faint luster of cold sweat collects on the edge of his hairline and neck. It’s uncomfortable and icky, and he feels downright miserable. His mum used to always tell him to bring Asprin in his bag in secondary school, and he got so stubborn on not taking them that she’d eventually stuffed them in at the very bottom one morning, but he always insisted that it would be just his luck someone (or worse, the principal) would catch him take one, assume he’s taking an acid tablet, and have him sent in shackles to the police station. Of course, this never happened, but also he never had the guts to take them whilst on school grounds.

Although an adult (barely, but still), and although not in rule-stricken secondary school anymore but in a university where you could drop off the face of the earth and still your profs wouldn’t bat an aged eye, he still carries this philosophy. So now, dragging his feet and walking like an actor in a bad zombie film, he chastises himself for not being well enough prepared. But later, in the evening or even tomorrow morning when his head is so pain-free he can headbang to American punk music, he’ll forget that he ever had a migraine in the first place and skip on down to first-period music theory. 

When his last class of the day, horticulture, so not much note-taking but instead prepping cosmo seeds to be germinated, ended and he shucked a pair of mint green gardening gloves into their residential bucket, Graham nearly broke down the dense, fingertip freezing, metal door to leave. He needs coffee, like right now. Or tea, or a can of fizzy, or just anything with caffeine. He needs it now before he walks into the busy streets of London to ask someone to shoot him in the foot because maybe that much pain would take his mind off of his head. 

His current list of activities as he nearly bulldozes over people with how quick his fast-paced walk is proceeding as follows:

GET CAFFEINATED DRINK!!  
BUY THE DAMN ASPRIN  
Go sit in the orchestra room and listen to his band director’s Tchaikovsky CD  
Try and take a nap in there before having to go home to noisy roommate Alex

The caffeine, for which he seems a junkie of as about now, is somehow a magical, mystical drug that relieves about 60% of his migraine, every time. He couldn’t explain it (ask a science major, not an art one), but his mum, who also had a background of nauseating headaches, would readily give him the same doctoral treatment of Pepsi and Excedrin. When he was in primary school, sometimes migraines were just an excuse to have a sugary can of pop that his mum was very strict about. 

“Could I get- um...an iced Americano...please?” He picks at his cuticles, looking at the menu above the baristas head to avoid making eye contact, pretending to be browsing all the options despite ordering the same thing every time.

“Will that be all?” She smiles, but not in a plastic, customer service way, more in a way as if she could see all the pain written on Graham’s face, based on the deep crease between his eyebrows. It makes him feel awfully readable. And self-conscious. 

He steps back a bit, back hunching slightly as if to hide in plain public, “Um…” he looks over the pastries, “And a lemon scone, please.”

She hands him the scone in a bag with handles instead of those awful cafe bags that you just have to carry by the bottom (which is terribly inconvenient), and he sips his drink steadily, biting on the straw until the plastic at the tip looks like a sad dog-chewed shoe out of nervous habit. The walk from the campus-ran cafe, which is annoyingly packed during exam season, to the band department is not very long, which is very kind of the original architects to have done considering he’s about ten minutes from knocking himself unconscious to not have to deal with having a headache whilst aware. 

He pushes the door open with his forearm, dirty Converse looking cheap and out of place in such a regale area. He hears the tickle of some piano keys, something he recognizes as Mozart quickly. The string basses and timpani set hide in the dark, tucked away from all the wide, inviting windows.

“Hey, Mr. Baker, I’m havin’ a doozy, but I brought you a scone as a peace treaty- Oh!” His shoes scuff and squeak when he stops abruptly, ice cubes clinking around in his cup, it makes him wince, “Sorry, I didn’t know he was having company.”

The boy across from him, eyes wide and seemingly petrified like a cat, stops what he’s doing completely. His hands fly off of the grand piano like he’s been caught doing something naughty, and pretends to have never have touched a piano before, “Oh, no, not company. He actually just left, told me he had some repairs to pick up from the...music shop?” The Mozart boy cracks his knuckles, looking at Graham’s stilted posture in the doorway, “Sorry, I’m Damon.” He salutes shortly with two fingers, “I don’t take music, he’s just a good friend of m’dads.”

Grahams shoulders deflate a bit, “Oh, well,” His mind, through all the clanging throbbing, is yelling at him to leave the situation before he can embarrass himself any further than he feels like he already has, “You play...great for someone who doesn’t take music, really.”

Damon chorltes quietly, “Oh that wasn’t me, that was my CD.” This is as unconvincing to Graham as it, unfortunately, is to Damon, who’d preplanned this cover-up hours before in his head in case someone walked in on him.

He changes the subject quickly, “Soo… what’s a doozy?” He smiles a bit when a light flush blows over the youthful peaks of Graham’s cheeks in a kick of embarrassment because at least he wasn’t the one in the hot seat now.

“It’s um- its a stupid thing, I just get these horrible migraines, and I usually come in here during to get a quiet atmosphere and a dark room because, well, my roommate is a right window rattler- he’s very noisy naturally, and it usually causes my head to go berzerk in pain and..yeah.” He has to take a sip of his coffee before he word vomits all over the polished floors again.

“Ohh...like a headache?” Graham groans internally but nods despite himself because he just needs to get some peace and quiet before he nearly passes out. “Don’t let me distract you.”

Graham nods quickly, legs walking more solid-like and very unnaturally to the CD player, “I’m just gonna…” he points to it to let Damon know he’s going to change the CD. He opens the tray, and at this point, Damon has looked away to avoid the situation that nearly about to unfold, to see a Jam CD stuck inside. Call his bluff, but Graham doesn’t particularly remember Paul Weller ever playing Mozart. Nonetheless, he clicks the disc out without a word (as a charity act to save Damon the mortification) and pops in a recording of Tchaikovsky’s fifth symphony and skips to the second movement to hear the horn solo he just can’t get enough of.

His hand accidentally crinkles the scone bag, which reminds him of how useless his purchase is as about now, “Hey,” Damon looks up, a bit sweatier than he was a few seconds ago, “Do you want this, they gave me two on accident, and ‘m not much of a sweets person.” There’s a beat of a pause “Lemon scone.” He shakes the bag a millimeter similarly to a bag of dog treats.

Despite knowing that he’d purposely purchased it for his professor, Damon nods anyway, (He guesses they’re just both seemingly horrible at thinking of cover-ups), “Thanks, uhh…” He looks up at the boy’s shaggy, curly mop of hair when he hands over the pastry.

“Graham!” He answers, “It’s Graham.”

“Thanks, Graham.” He toys with the paper handle between his fingers, “I’ll just let you...lay down-”

Graham waves his hands back and forth, “Oh, don’t bother! There’s a couch in the practice room, I usually stay in there anyways, feel free to, ya know, stay and whatnot.”

Damon nods slowly, “Yeah I have some, um, stats work to do. ‘S my major.”

“Cool, cool,” he sort of feels like he’s answering to a child who went on about some unearthly tangent, “Mines art..anyway. Cheers.”

Graham’s head feels like it hurts tenfold when he closes the door behind him.


	2. Board Games for Your Troubles

“Oh yeah, _soo_ scary that this anti-social kid with like, enough friends to count on one hand knows you play piano, big fucking deal.”

“No, no big fucking deal! _Huge_ deal!” Damon fists the sleeve of Jamie’s shirt, forcing him to spin around and stare at him, “What if it gets out? You don’t know what could happen, Jay.”

“I just think you’re overreacting-”

“I’m not!” Damon releases his shirt and it leaves a patch of wrinkles, he drops the volume of his voice but it’s still high in intensity, “If my dad finds out he’s not going to pay for my college anymore, and then I’m fucking screwed.” He shoots a large breath through his nose after a moment, “So yeah, no big fucking deal. I can’t just draw Mickey Mouse all day and act like life is great.”

 _“Okay-”_ Jamie presses his hand to Damon’s chest, right over printed Johnny Marr’s face where he stands next to the rest of The Smiths, “Just because you’re properly pissed doesn’t mean you can attack me, mate.” Pause, “Look, I get why you’re stressed- I’d get stressed if that was me.”

His angry, panicked friend takes a heavy deep breath, in through the nose, out the mouth, “I just don’t know what to do.” He knuckles at his eyes, shaking his head when his words only come out as a mumble. When he looks back up, Jamie’s smiling sympathetically, head tipped to the side motherly.

“Have a pint, watch some rubbish telly with me, _aaaand_ we can play Risk. Put down the silly numbers for a while, think they’re gettin’ to your head, son.” He pats a firm hand onto the expanse of Damon’s back, shaking his body forward. His fingers ruffle through D’s hair, and he groans, turning his head to the right to get out his hands’ reach.

So, he does. And they do. Like always, Jamie loses at Risk because he is absolute shite at strategy games, and much prefers to play something like Life because it’s luck-based. 

Moving around his quite sizable ego, he hates to admit that his best mate was right, he did feel better. Although heavily promoted by the two cans of beer they’ve each helped themselves to, he doesn’t necessarily think of Graham, or his insufferable predisposed major, or even his dad. Which is always nice to not think about...his relationship with the ole’ man, in particular.

Secondary school was blatantly a nightmare for Damon. His dad, a wealthy businessman, constantly relayed, from a very young age mind you, that the only way to be successful in life was to work in the business. In an office job. A nine to five that leaves your back impaired from years in sitting in a cardboard thin padded chair, your own mobility being from your chair to the fax printer. It makes him gag at the thought of his fate (however tonight, in particular, he’d be gagging from alcohol instead of anxiety). And his dear father, Mark, made it painfully clear to Damon the day before he left for university that if he found out his son was participating in anything that would distract him from his studies, his funds are getting flatlined. He resents, maybe even hates, his dad for controlling so much of his childhood and for not even having the decency to at least hide some of his rubbish, womanizing, deadbeat behavior. And he also resents himself a bit for allowing his dad to continuously control him into adulthood- where he’s supposed to be free!

And of, _bloody_ , course did Damon’s one true passion have to be music. Real, out there, crazy guitars, big drums music. The first time he bought a CD was in an act of rebellion, so he picked out Revolver from the rows and rows of discs, and paid the full three pounds in his own cash from his own job. It felt good, like a big middle finger to his lousy excuse of a dad. He’d listened to that CD in Jamie’s (who lived across the street) player so many times, and so much so that Jamie himself had learned all the words to Taxman just from hearing it in the background constantly. Damon would shove the album into the bottom of his T-shirt drawer that also had a sealed jar with other assorted music memorabilia he’d gotten from shows he snuck out to see.

Damon wakes up with a hangover the next morning, just half an hour before class.

“FUCK!”

Jamie later tells him it nearly rattled the entire floor of their flat complex.

When he’s just barely made it to English Composition, his shoes untied and shirt a bit shoved off to the side, his breath labors like he’s running a marathon. The students around him couldn't really care any less, however, much too preoccupied in their _own_ hungover uni student thoughts. As a third-year upperclassman, he should really not underestimate how frequent drinking occurs in his demographic.

After class, he decides to tackle the comp project guidelines, get a head start. Supposed to research something...encyclopedia...something you’ve never looked into before….okay. Sure, alright, easy enough. He reads over the one-sided, brief bullet point list of instructions once, twice, another five times. His hand has been holding onto the edge for so long it’s grown clammy with sweat. 

Damon walks around the school library like he’s never seen a book before, pacing quickly through the isles and reading all the organized sections by genre out loud under his breath. He must look silly. But he does manage to find an encyclopedia collection to last one multiple lifetimes. Okay...world knowledge...geography...medical…? 

Damon thumbs through each moderately thick book, tipping out the medical encyclopedia, he’d never considered that there would be one of such subject matter. When the book is in his hands and floods his senses with an overwhelming amount of comforting old book smell, he lays it on its spine and cracks open to a random page. If this was about seven years ago, (oh Lord, seven?!) he would’ve perused the table of contents, flipped to the ‘P’ section, and giggled at the penis diagrams. He scans the two pages, their words, and pictures- Oh! M section. 

The first word is migraine, supplied with a few photo scans of the brain. Migraine...wait! This is what Graham had a few days ago. Called it a doozy... for some reason unbeknownst to the rest of the world. What an odd character. 

Nevertheless, consider his attention grabbed, despite not really having any academic knowledge in the medical field, and over the course of the next week, he grabs multiple books on the brain and pain stimulation to finish his essay. It ended up being short of maybe 10 pages, which is saying a lot because his writing is so small, and he almost feels bad for his professor that who’d have to spend time over the weekend, huddled into his country townhouse, and read a stats major’s essay on bad headaches.

He considers himself something of a migraine expert now. And, he got an excellent grade for his analysis of chemicals in the brain. 

Alas, this information becomes very handy just a week later. 

Damon’s at the black grand piano again (happy Wednesday), hands reaching around the top of its octaves to pick out a Debussy melody that he’s slowed down considerably to try and comprehend. It’s a bit choppy, but he’s getting there. With the amount of time he spends alone playing the same measures of scaling lines and rhythms, he’ll have it as (nearly) perfect as the composer did when he’d written it down in a few more hours.

The slam of a door startled him, and the note that was supposed to be legato and staccato ends up being a slammed, sharp chord. Damon’s eyes are wide, face as pale as the keys his nervous hands rest on. 

Nobody ever enters though, which is odd because the room he’s sitting in is the main practice room where each ensemble gathers for an hour every day. So he assumes someone’s gone into the storage room to pick up an instrument. Still, his fingers are still stalled on the piano, trying his best to pinpoint any sounds to see where the perpetrator was and when they’d leave. 

But then he hears someone...throwing up? Dry heaving. No, not dry heaving because he’s just heard liquid splash into the bowl, as vulgar as it is. 

Don’t be a good person, don’t be a good person, don’t... He rises quickly from the padded bench, shoes tapping against the corridor’s linoleum when he opens the bathroom. Damn him for having a good conscience, he supposed. 

_“Graham?”_

The boy in front of him, who’s hunched over a toilet, is seemingly unrecognizable if it weren’t for his hair and backpack that Damon took note of (because it had a Robert Smith pin and he was undoubtedly a huge Cure fan). His back is bowed out, head down, a jacket was thrown off in a hurry and shucked onto his bag. There’s a picture of a woman on the back of his red tee, and it says ‘What cha see... is what cha get.’ Damon would laugh under different circumstances. 

Still not having looked up, his visibly leaf-like shaking hand comes up to flush the toilet, then to grab his thick-rimmed black glasses from off of the floor and back onto his face. (When Damon sees this, all he can think about is the germs). Graham finally turns around to make eye contact with the concerned pianist, face drained of all youthful color and eyes glazed over. There’s a thick line of sweat on his cheekbones, and it’s obvious where some of it rolled down in beads from his forehead. 

In conclusion, he looked like shit. 

“You look like shit.” It’s more of a spoken-out-loud exasperated thought than a derogatory dig. 

Graham clears his throat, standing up slowly and clapping his hands off on his thighs, “Sorry,” he mumbles as he maneuvers his body around Damon’s, moving to the sink to wash his hands. He doesn’t say anything, nor looks up in the mirror at the blonde boy who’s stood concerned. 

“Are you...y’know...having an episode?” 

Graham chuckles quietly but with the state his throat is in, it comes out like a rough cough, “You sound like my doctor. ‘Episode.‘“ His voice is grungy and grainy like he’d just woken up with a dreadful cold.

“Oh yeah, I researched migraines actually...the medical experts refer to them as episodes...so I just...anyway- are you alright?” Damon would normally lean a doting hand on Graham’s shoulder as a means of comfort but he feels it might be overwhelming. 

Graham clears his throat like a smoker, “Uh,” a hand comes up to ruffle his hair back and forth, “Sometimes when they get bad, they make me throw up. Couldn’t tell you why, really.” He picks up his bag by its back handle and throws it on, jacket shrugged over his shoulder. “Sorry you had to see that,” he wipes a bit of sweat off with his forearm, “Was proper gross.” He laughs a bit leading to the end of his sentence. 

Damon peaks through his peripherals to look at the toilet again, “You should see my roommate, a right drunk bastard. I see this about twice a week.” He chuckles boyishly in his quiet tone. The air quickly reeks of thick awkwardness, the sick boy’s shoes digging into the tile. “Hey,” Damon spots, “You don’t have coffee like you did last time.”

Graham looks at his empty hands, “Yeah, um, had to get here quick before, you know, I _threw up_ everywhere-”

“Do you want me to get you one?” His face is riddled with concern. As a self-proclaimed doctor (starting... now), he did read that caffeine’s chemical composition stimulates the brain and...something else, that’s about all he remembers. When he read the section, using his and Graham’s first interaction as some sort of basis, he connected the two points of his coffee, the light music, and the dark room to a lot of the things he’d found researching. It was always nice to understand the world a bit better.

“No no, I couldn’t ask you-” 

“Think of it as payback!” Damon flinches at how fast he cuts him off, “You gave me that scone so, I can get you a coffee.” He wastes no breath, “What’s your order?”

There’s no room to decline anymore, and Graham fiddles with a hangnail on his right thumb, “Oh, iced americano, please- and thank you! Really.” He finds that the thought of someone spending their own money on him makes him feel terribly mediocre, but at this point, his brain is too fumbled from just tossing up breakfast _and_ lunch to even give it a second thought.

Damon nods curtly, smiling self-assertively and reassuringly, turning on his sneaker’s heels as they squeak in protest without another word. The cold air pricks a sea of goosebumps onto his arms and sends a flash of a shudder down his spine, but he walks with a purpose since baring through the glass doors and doesn't waste a second dillydallying when his speed walk almost picks up into a jog.

He feels like a better person today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hellooooo I'm currently having an inspiration overdrive so if you see too many chapter updates from me, look the other way for a moment. anyway hope ya like it. disclaimer for any practicing doctors or whatever but I did not do research on migraines lol this is all just from experience.


	3. Football Games Are A Girl's Best Friend

Graham effectively haaaaates football games. Like, worse than he hates manufactured boy bands or pistachio shells that won't open. And he tends to get very cross with those shells.

Plainly speaking, it's a bit boring, and he has a hard time seeing the ball from all the way up here, nevertheless actually knowing which team has the ball. He doesn’t even know who's playing. It's all just a watercolor blur of colored jerseys and tiny lettering on the back.

It's also just an excuse for roommate Alex to get drunk, and force Graham to try and carry him home (which is difficult because Alex is A, extremely tall and B, extremely lanky), take care of him like a doting mother, and then also nurse his hangover after the fact. Graham can’t really understand sometimes how Alex has so many friends and is just a social butterfly because he had to be taken care of so often, or have his stringy fringe held back when he’s throwing up all the alcohol in his stomach. Into the bowl, please- yeah, just like that.

All the same, he’s a bit tipsy now. This isn't unusual, per se, but he has an awfully hard time allowing himself to be openly intoxicated in the presence of others, much less in public. (The thought of doing something embarrassing that has the potential of being remembered by at least one person sends him into a frenzy of anxiety). But Alex said, in his stupid, no good, way of being incredibly persuasive, that he’d looked like he’d just seen a car wreck because ‘his shoulders were up to his neck,’ and that he should have a few drinks (as uni kids do so well) to just enjoy himself ‘for once.’ Graham wanted to roll his eyes at the last bit, he had fun! Albeit in less crowded spaces. 

But, as to be expected by anyone he meets by first glance, he's just...well, plain nervous. Like, all of the time. He fidgets and blinks and hums and plays with hairbands between his calloused fingers. He doesn't necessarily like to draw attention to himself and unfortunately, drinking brings some kind of loud-mouthed persona out of him, really kicks the outgoing switch on that's been dialed to three his entire life, and he just loves to make a fool of himself. And he'll wake up the next morning, migraine crisp and readily painful, and remember all the things he said without even a moment's brush of thought of discernment. All the unfunny jokes, and all the times he said "Ya want to see me pull a funny face? Heres Paul McCartney!" The regretful cringe follows shortly.

Now he's about ankle deep in some tap beer that his so charitable best friend was bringing him, hands sticky from where the foam would break over the edges and spill onto his thumbs. (Because, maybe yeah, he should have some fun. It's a Saturday, time doesn't exist!). His mate looks a bit silly, Graham regards, two massive hands carrying around pints in plastic cups that’ll get littered all over campus grounds, smiling with his teeth in a drunken daze of ungovernable emotions. It also should be noted that Alex James is drinking about twice the pace of his more abstinent friend, has done a few lines off somebody's forearm, and still could walk into the catholic church across the street and look like a teetotaler. 

“Hey!” Alex slurs into his ear, mildly deafening, “Me and a few mates are gonna go...somewhere? I'll be back okay?” 

He hands Graham his cup of lonely lager, “Alright.” Alex pats his shoulders with both hands in happy confirmation.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, no, no! God! Curse this damned day. If Alex’s past habits are any marker of where this night will develop, Alex won't be back. He's almost certainly gone and fucked off to somebody's flat to have drugs and a threesome before (somehow) making it home the next morning in such a corpse-like state Graham will have a small heart palpitation episode. It's a ruthless cycle.

Completely alone, despite in a huddled mess of students all yelling and carrying on, he’s a bit more alert of his surroundings. The sinking feeling of being withdrawn from any kind of internal comfort he gets from being around familiar faces turns the volume tab in his head to almost one hundred, because now he can hear...everything. If it's not the overhead announcer or the cacophony of loud radios (either handheld or from cars), it's the lust denoted love confessions from behind the dingy bathroom. It might drive him nuts. His two hands, despite already being preoccupied with alcohol, feel out of place and he hates not having enough range of motion to be able to bite his nails, or pick at his skin (don’t tell his mother), or just anything to relieve the anxiety. So to cope with the impending doom he is sure is about to occur, he sips from both brews, left-right, left-right, and maybe to make himself laugh he’ll drink from both at the same time. God, being alone sucks.

In a sudden (but expected) turn of events, he’s drunk. Hip popped to one side because all of his weight is leaning on the only leg that will hold it up, and eyes lost upon the moving little figures around the field. He needs to leave this place. It's much too overstimulating for his brain, the lights, and the smells. The glasses perched on the top of his head do him no bloody favors because he could barely make out his own fingers in front of him when he’d been wearing them over the past hour and a half. He also has the strongest urge for a cigarette, which he sans a pack of, but that's just the jumping, electric nerves that pulse through his brain and send warning signals in flashing sirens speaking. Because at least nicotine would numb his racing heart more than beer. He absolutely, positively, despises the topsy turvy feeling that his stomach experiences whilst drunk, it's uncomfortable and like a warningly close spot of bile is sitting in his throat, waiting to be vomited out if he were to be shaken only a second. It's not like he even mingled anyway, he sort of moved with the crowd like a fish in a school does. If everyone started moving to the left, his tapping feet would follow stumbling, all the while staring at the crowd and at people's faces and their outfits and their haircuts with a thousand-year empty stare. 

Graham decides, with two empty, foam-lined cups in his hands, that he's going to find his way out of here and walk home. Alone. Drunk. Which isn't his best idea, but not everybody's Einstien.

His slim torso twists and turns to curve around the crowd he's shuffling through, tipsy toes tripping on plastic chairs and discarded beer cans. The Converse on his feet were tied neatly when he left the house but were currently a heap of convolute strings and harsh scuffs. The same goes for the cuffs of his pants, which were expertly rolled and then pressed with an iron (a gift from his nan) at the beginning of the week to keep shape, only now they were uneven and were dragging along, edges touching the mucky ground. He’d be upset about this tomorrow. It was like he was fighting for his life on a stupid reality television show trying to get out of the football field, there were bodies everywhere, and not to mention they were basically interconnected as if to block him from leaving.

“Fuck,” he mumbles while looking at the tar-pitched sky, tall hunched street lights creating a spotlight of glow that barely lit any of the pavement. He coughs loudly, stomach clenching from the impact, and chest reverberating. The plastic cups he’d been parenting over the night are gone, somewhere, could be anywhere by now really, and the only items on him are a lighter in his front left pocket and a wallet in the right (thank God he still had that). Amidst the mess that is the lower half of his wardrobe, he looks at least presentable from the waist up. His heather grey t-shirt (that says “Pacific Beach, CALIFORNIA'' even though he couldn't tell you where that was on a map) is covered up by a mildly thick blue and white plaid jacket-thick-overshirt-insulated type garment. Although he wouldn't necessarily be able to walk into a Catholic church, he might be able to crash a dad’s barbecue. 

“You ‘right, mate?” His head almost whips off the hinges to find the voice, extremely startle, his sight looking like a kaleidoscopic tunnel, “Graham?”

She steps forward earnestly, concern written on her face and etched into the creases of her forehead. Her eyes flick up and down to take in his lazily put-together state, she blinks a few times, shoelaces ‘n all, “Hey, are you alright?” Her voice softens, though, being able to immediately indicate (and smell) that he’s extremely intoxicated. He’s breathing a bit heavy, not like he's going to have a panic attack, but like he went for a light job. She keeps a distance like he's an unpredictable loose animal, however. He has a hard time reaching her eyes, staying to stare comfortably at the black Chelsea boots she wears with a heel on the back that's barely longer than the space from his fingertip to middle knuckle. She also wears a pair of frilly white socks, which peak out over the tip of the boots, and a sheer, black pair of pantyhose. From where he's standing, that's as willing as he is to look any further, in fear to make eye contact. He'd hoped to make it out of this situation without any uncomfortable moments, and now he's been approached when he's pissed off his rocker and almost entirely out of it. Don't do the McCartney face, don't do the McCartneys face...

Not that he can actually feel embarrassment right now, the only real emotion he can strongly feel is the willpower to stay standing upright and not sway around like a stationary flag.

“Jane?” His eyes open a bit wider, and he tugs the glasses that- thankfully, are still sitting on top of his mop of waves onto the bridge of his nose, “I didn’t think you’d be here. You never liked these silly things.” Graham quickly realized he’s as blind as Cupid’s arrow, lenses smudged with sweat in the corner and various fingerprints from his grimey wandering hands. He scowls deeply at it, puffing out his cheeks when a sigh of breath goes out his lips and cleans the eyewear feverishly with the edge of his t-shirt. When he slips them on, he can see Jane fully. It’s sickeningly nostalgic. 

“Oh-”

“Shit!” He lurches forward into a sitting position, hands planted like firm stakes to keep balance and also to keep his head from spinning. Grounding himself a moment, he breathes quickly through his nose, eyes scattered in a line of sight, dashing from the lit lamp on top of Jamie’s bamboo desk to the stack of science fiction books on the carpeted floor, next to their ransacked pile of sneakers. His heartbeat must be that of a treadmill runner, a thin sweat quickly lining his forehead, which is sticky and uncomfortable and Damon doesn’t like this feeling at all. His lips are beyond chapped like he’d been biting them for the past two hours, and the insides of his throat feel like a mangled pile of vocal cords tied together instead of strung. 

His hands release from their bolted stability, knuckles cracking almost like an uncontrolled reflex, and he finally lets out a large sigh from his mouth. His eyes close, and he collapses against the back of the couch. Now his neck is the next to be cracked. The tough denim of his jeans are strongly uncomfortable and restrictive, but he’s too sleepily disorientated to give it a second thought. Somehow, he only has one sock on, and his bare foot is terribly cold in the dead quiet flat. The chained bracelet on his left hand sings out softly like sleigh bells as the metal clinks against itself when he pushed stray strands of his bedhead out of the way.

When his eyes reopen, the bright blue book of algebra stares at him pitifully, all numbers and equations and whatnot. Damon’s eyes almost fry out when he sees the same formula written once, twice, thrice...and he wants to burn that menacingly patronizing book to its last edges. To put it bluntly, Damon’s not too excited about math. Or it’s no good, thick books. It could be worse, he tries to console himself, he could be studying chemistry. He decides executively to shut the book for now, to shove his loose homework papers in between pages of the book, lose his pencil during the process, and finish another day.

When he rubs his eyes and gives his back a good enough stretch for a gymnast, he finally gets up from the couch. The CD player on the coffee table (whose cable has nearly been stretched to its limits) no longer plays its Eric Clapton disc and has grown quiet since ceasing to spin. Tears in Heaven is but a lullaby. He clicks the disc out with his thumb and places it back into its holder, even unplugs the player and wraps up the chord. He's proper cleaning up his mess, although minimal, because it's just brushing midnight and his body slumps like a zombie while his eyes are as lidded as John Lennon's in 1967. He craves sleep more than any other material item that's ever graced the Earth once.

“Good gracious,” Jamie says from the doorway, plush black robe wrapped around his body, hip popped, and arms crossed. The bathroom he walks out from is a smokescreen of water vapor and the window is heavily fogged over.

Damon tenses heavily, shoulders reaching his ears, “Christ!” His hand slaps his chest, “Gave me a bloody heart attack.” He turns on his heels like a dancer.

His simply aloof friend walks past the couch, from which he was standing behind, and into the kitchen. Excess water in his hair, from the shower he’d just taken (hence the robe), drips onto the tile and Damon rolls his eyes knowing he’d be the one to either clean it up or slip on it like a cartoon does a banana. “Did you even answer the phone when he called?” He doesn’t look at his poorly aware friend and refills the kettle to set on the stove.

“Who called?” His face is severely confused, eyebrows scrunched and lips pursed. He leans a shin against the couch, careful not to lean all his weight on it and push it off the rug.

Jamie lowers the kettle for a second, and sighs (oh so) dramatically, “Alex! The guy!” He still hasn't turned around to look at Damon. The stove clicks with flame and the kettle rattles against the metallic rims. It whistles with fury after a while, blowing hot steam into Jamie's face, he flinches away. All of the fixings, milk and sugar, in particular, are pulled out from their hiding places in preparation. 

He lowers his head to search around in his brain, previously muddled with arithmetic and a deep hatred for a certain textbook, now certainly lacking in any remembrance of an Alex. Who was alleged ‘the guy!’ by Jamie as if he was everybody’s best friend. Well, maybe he was and Damon didn’t get out enough. 

“I'm not following.”

“The guy I set you up on a date with! God, you complain so much about being single, and then the one moment I do something nice the universe ignores me.” He says it in one breath, more talking to himself than the boy by the sofa. With his tea made, a light beige color with a spoonful of sugar, he drags his slippers across the tiled floor, hair still dripping about like a broken faucet, and heads back into his room to get dressed. Sometimes he'll walk over a spot of water and his slipper will dry it up like he's a walking mop. "He's in my French class, that's what he majors in- I asked. Extremely good-looking bloke, though." It's honestly a wonder how he meets these people.

“Oh, and, by the way,” Body halfway into the door, Jamie turns around to make direct eye contact with his horribly confused best mate for the first time during the entire conundrum, “I’ve left his address on a note in the kitchen, go to his flat and make amends. Or make date plans, I don't know, just don't say I never did anything for you.” The door shuts and suddenly the living room smells like the overbearing scent of Jamie's orange-scented body washing that's seeping from the bathroom's atmosphere into the rest of the flat. Damon has to question why he was taking a shower near one in the morning, but he can't really tell if this kid ever gets sleep.

He looks back at the white door frame, to the lonely kitchen island with a bowl of fruit and two bananas that are nearly fluorescent green due to being so unripe (he'd once read they hold more health benefits to their ripe contemporaries), and collapses back on the couch to sleep off the rest of his confusion. The bed will have to wait another day to be slept on.

The next day, which happens to be a lovely Sunday- all birds chirping and sun shining, Graham’s face is shoved into a white pillow, hair a lot of a mess, and sheets barely covering the cold that washed over his bare back in waves. He doesn't move, partially because he doesn't think his body has the ability to, but simply turns his head to the right side of the room, opposite the blinding window. The tiny tattoo on his shoulder peaks through when he folds his hands over his head, scratching the back of head in a lazy, soothing circular motion.

He breathes in a deep sigh and tries to get comfortable again, toes flexing and curling by their own account, cracking softly underneath the duvet. He stretches out his lanky legs vertically, feeling the satisfying pull of his hamstrings before releasing them with a large, comfortable exhale. All is well then. Despite the fact that he doesn't remember how he got home last night or what particularly happened for the five hours he was left unsupervised. Or that the sides of his head are nagging at him, which means a headache is simply rubbing its hands together maniacally and gearing up like a lawnmower motor.

His morning peace is disrupted by a knock at the front door. Oh, great-

“Hello?”

Wait. Whos that? 

Unless it’s Alex pulling somebody at the door’s leg in an act of “I'm not here right now!”, (To which he pulls a voice he deems as feminine and calls himself 'Cindy,' but, really, he's planned this whole persona out. Name, outfit, hair color. She's got red hair, by the way) or maybe one of his roommate's one-night stands? But that wouldn't make sense, seeing as he kicks them out before 10:00 AM and it's noon (Graham takes a double-take at the clock, astonished that he’d slept this long). So then...

A slight rush of panic runs from the top of his head until all the blood drains from his face and suddenly he's hyper-aware of his presence. Check one, this is his apartment. Check two...did he bring someone home? Fuck!

He rushes up from out of the bed, blanket chucking off of the side of the mattress on the floor and crumbling into a mess of fabric. There's a shirt on the floor but he decides not to put it on after seeing the sad state it's crumpled up in at the dead corner of the crown molding. He nicks one from his half-closed dresser drawer and throws it over his torso as he skips through the door. It's a striped, wrinkled fiasco of a thing, collarbones peaking out the neck of his shirt because it's dragged to the left. His clunky movements ring loudly through the flat.

“Hi, is Alex here?” Is that-?

“Damon?”

“Graham?” Maybe Alex was friends with everybody.

His eyes jet to the lass at the door, “Jane?”

It should be noted that she- Jane, his ex-girlfriend of all people, is wearing a kind of stupid graphic tee that is unmistakably Graham’s and also his sweatpants, which not only makes his head twist and turn and spin, but also finds it particularly, peculiarly...well, to put it light, annoying, is his knee jerk reaction. The girl at the door, eyes a bit wide and startled, shoves off the front frame that shes leaning on and claps her hands like two chalkboard erasers, “I'll let you get to it.” She pads quickly back into his bedroom like a mouse, which he also finds a bloody nuisance that it had to be his bedroom, like she owned the place. Normally, he's more level-headed, but he’d been scared out of his bed (literally!) and been sent on a massive double down after seeing not only his ex but also the guy who sometimes he sees because he has a migraine. Speaking of, he's developing one now, which only adds to his reason to shake a fist at the sky and collapse out of self-pity.

But nevertheless, Damon still stands by the door, soldier-like stance never breaking in all its nervous glory. His feet seem stuck to the floor, or like he refuses to move, like a child throwing a tantrum in the toy aisle. Graham takes a sigh to remedy some of the emotions and scrambling confusion in his head, and folds his hands into the pockets of his trackies.

He tries to laugh it off, shoulders shaking, “Trouble in paradise?”

Graham thumbs his glasses back up when they slipped down some, “Um I...I actually don't know what she's...doing here.” His voice trails off with his sight, as he traces her path to his room with his eyes once more before shooting back to the guest at the door, “Anyway,” It's quick and hushed, “You needed Alex?”

The silence is jelly thick between them, difficult to walk through even with your wading rubber boots and the sheer human force of muscle. Damon kind of looks lost, hands clasped behind him with the fingers interlaced, and Graham can tell just by the way his wrist moves back and forth that he's desperately picking at a hangnail to relieve himself of the awkward tension. “Um, yeah, actually.” 

Damon shoots out a breath from his lungs, eyes closing longer than a blink, “Okay, so, to explain the situation, I have this estranged roommate who, I guess, knows Alex? He thought I was lonely or something, I don't know, and, well, set us up on a date?” This is horribly embarrassing, and his face is probably tomato red, “And I told you I study stats, so I was studying, and whatnot, and I fell asleep and missed his call? So, I’d like to talk to him and reschedule,” His voice drops to a pitiful volume next, hand scratching at the back of his neck, “and, maybe, I don't know, apologize.”

Damon can’t really pinpoint why he was so nervous, other than the fact that it was morally mortifying to make up for his best friend’s actions. Because the only time he really does get nervous is when someone finds out about his dirty, naughty habits (of having an interest in music, that is), and unfortunately, and maybe by the hands of fate, Graham just happened to be there both times to catch him. Once playing, once because he accidentally ditched his blind-phonecall. It's the good posh boy in him that fears to make a bad impression to Graham, whom he'd met maybe a month ago and most conversations came from the shy fella in pain. So...there's that.

Graham slips a hand from his pockets, coming to rest it on the doorknob and twist it back and forth silently, “Oh!” He actually chuckles a bit, it’s very timid, “Don't worry ‘bout it, mate. Alex actually wasn't in last night,” He contemplates in about a millisecond whether to dish out his friend’s dirty laundry, (“He actually wasn't in because he was having a threesome and probably forgot about you to snort coke. Sorry mate, you're not the first!”) the answer is no because Graham is a saint, “Had a friend to go tend to or summat.” He realizes how flaky this sounds, “I guess they had an upcoming test? Started getting all panicked and all that, so he had to rush out actually.” The pace at which he talks grows quicker as he tries to climb out of the hole he's also simultaneously digging. He weaves a hand into his hair and shakes it out.

“Anyway,” He waves a hand, “I'll let him know you came over, and I’ll have him call you, yeah?”

Damon nods quickly, mumbling a ‘yeh’, blonde hair whisking with his movements. It also rattles the beaded necklace that rests on the collar of his shirt (which is a white and gray sort of athletic top, with the acronym PMYSA and a football, which kind of makes Graham want to throw up, remembering the night before) and is a bit tucked underneath his white bomber jacket (collar popped and lined with a red plaid pattern). The conversation seems pretty much done, and, if he's being selfish, Graham is waiting for Damon to end it because he's just rubbish at doing it himself. Like reading his mind, Damon is getting ready to relay a friendly, coworker type goodbye, or see ya on the flipside!, but he glimpses a peek into his bedroom (the door had been opened from the inside by the girl, Jane) and he can see a mess of scattered clothes on the floor. Jeans, a t-shirt, boxers, and then, suspiciously, a black lace slip dress and a fumbled ball of deflated pantyhose.

Damon chortles a breathy, abrupt laugh, walking backward a bit in the direction of the staircase, before he can look to see what he's laughing at, “I'll leave you to it, then. I think you’ve got company to take care of.” 

Whilst walking down the stairs he ponders if it's too rude to tease someone you've only talked to a handful of times. The answer is no, because Damon is not a saint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bare with me for a second...this chapter has taken me the last two (I think two) weeks to write, plan, edit, erase, and write again because I really wanted to map out the entire story and where I'm going, and I did! So, if you'd thought I'd went AWOL...fear not, I didn't. There should be another update coming shortly (certainly not in two weeks...hopefully) because now that I have a good, sort of concrete, the path for this, I have loads of inspiration and ideas. Thank you for sticking with me, you wonderful people.


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